


These Years of Madness

by sarken



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Hawk from Handsaw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-28
Updated: 2008-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarken/pseuds/sarken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How to fall apart in the Delta Quadrant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Years of Madness

**Author's Note:**

> This would have been impossible if not for Jim Wright's amazing episode transcripts at Delta Voyager.

"What we did to each other in those few  
years of madness! What we did to ourselves!"  
\--Michael Frayn, Spies

I. _Scorpion_

Outside the Northwest Passage, she touched your chest and told you everything you wanted to hear. You swear you still feel the weight of her hand, the warmth of her skin seeping through your uniform, and as she speaks, you're afraid you'll never feel that again. You're listening to her words, but it's her body language that speaks to you. She's not going to last much longer.

"Kathryn," you say, touching her shoulder. She needs warmth now, a human touch, something other than anger to make her heart beat faster. She's lost, but she's too stubborn to ask for direction.

She feels so small under your hand, in those seconds of contact she allows you before she flinches away.

"You haven't slept in two days," you say, and you know you're being conservative. You always say two days; you can't stand to think that you've been here almost four years now. You can't let anything outside the next twenty-four or the last forty-eight hours exist. She feels all seventy years of this journey enough for both of you.

"Get some rest, clear your head," you continue, as if that's possible, as if eight hours in the dark will ever do her more good than harm. "We're safe for the moment. We can tell the crew tomorrow."

It will kill her, you know. If tomorrow morning comes and she has to tell the crew they're not going home, it will kill her. The way her shoulders slump, the way her whole body folds in on itself scares you. She leans against the railing, her knuckles going white as her fingers curl around the metal, and she's as small as you've ever seen her. Resignation isn't a good look on her, and it frightens you worse than her eagerness to make a suicide run through Borg space. You hate her like that, but you know it's her.

She breaks the thick silence between you. "See you in the morning," she says, and it's a friend's expression for 'get out.' With certainty, you know she won't sleep tonight. She won't even make it to her quarters, but you've done all you know how.

When you leave, she's staring into the blackness of space. She once told you she believes that, sometimes, she can see the entire universe when she does this, and you know the stars burn cold for her tonight.

II. _Night_

In the Void, her quarters are as black and lifeless as the space outside her window. You can barely see her standing in the shadows, and you know she prefers it that way. She wants to see no one, to be seen by no one, but she can't hide from the person she hates the most.

"Is that all, Commander?" she asks, staring into the universe. Her back is to you, and her arms are crossed as she tries to see past her reflection in the view port. Even like this, she's the epitome of a Starfleet captain. Her posture is ramrod straight and her uniform is immaculate, and you feel a flash of anger at the way she hides it so well. If she's going to fall apart, you want her to look that way. You want her rough around the edges, coming apart at the seams.

"No, Captain, it's not," you say, and you join her in the shadows. You haven't stood this close to her in weeks, and you swear you can feel a coldness emanating from her body, like she's something less than human. "Permission to speak freely?"

She won't deny it. She never has before. "Granted."

You can almost see her breath when she says that, and you realize the cold isn't coming from her. She's changed the environmental controls in her living space, and the air is cold and dry like the desert at twilight. "It's not like you to be so selfish."

She whirls to face you, and you think you have the reaction you need. "Oh, I'd say it's very much like me, Chakotay," she says, stepping into your space. Even in the darkness, you can see something shining in her eyes, the way they dance in time to her fury. "Do you know why I destroyed the array?"

There's a challenge there, and you refuse to rise to it. "Because it was the right thing to do."

"Because I was afraid," she spits back, the last word sounding vulgar on her lips. "I was afraid to break protocol. I was afraid of what Starfleet would do to me when I returned home and gave my report."

"I don't believe that," you say.

"You don't know me." She turns her back to you, as if that will keep you from knowing her.

"Dammit, Kathryn, you don't believe that." You grab her shoulders and wrench her back around, so hard she falls against you. You keep holding her by the shoulders. "And if you did, you would have no one but yourself to blame. You build walls so high that it's impossible to get through to you. Look at you. You sit here in the dark, and you still keep yourself hidden behind the walls of Starfleet." You grab at the black material of her jacket, fumbling for the zipper, and she pushes your hands away.

"I suggest you leave, Commander," she says, her voice pitched low, and you're only too happy to leave her to her darkness.

III. _Equinox_

She leaves the cargo bay with her short, quick strides, and you follow her, almost overtaking her in your anger.

"What are you doing?" you demand, and your heart feels ready to beat its way out of your chest. You've never seen this woman before, and you hope to never again.

"Weren't you listening?" Her voice is low and gravelly, and it sends a cold rush up your spine.

You were listening; you heard every word. 'That would be murder,' Lessing had said, and she had twisted it into justice.

"Don't do this!" You've kept this tone inside you, buried beneath cold Starfleet black for six long years. It's unsettling, almost, how it takes only three words to turn that off, to be Maquis again. You will fight Starfleet because it scares you to fight Kathryn.

Over the comm system, Tuvok's voice raises the stakes. "We've lost shields in section twenty-nine alpha," he reports, and you wonder if he knows his friend well enough, if he could make a logical, Vulcan assumption about what is transpiring. You wonder if she's gone this far before and, if so, what it takes to save her.

"He'll break," she tells you, the syllables catching roughly in her throat. She sounds as if she's in pain, like her rage is ripping apart everything inside her body.

You feel it, too, like a thousand razor blades cutting up your gut, testing how much your can take. You've never been able to hold back like a captain, and with Tuvok's status reports ringing in your ears, you break.


End file.
